The culmination of science in the eighteenth century was materialism, the first
system of natural philosophy and the consequence of this development of the
natural sciences. The struggle against the abstract subjectivity of Christianity
forced the philosophy of the eighteenth century to the other extreme; it opposed
subjectivity with objectivity, the mind with nature, spiritualism with materialism,
the abstract individual with the abstract universal or substance. The eighteenth
century represents the revival of the spirit of antiquity as against that of
Christianity. Materialism and the republic; the philosophy and politics of the
ancient world, arose anew, and the French, the exponents of the ethos of antiquity
within Christianity, assumed the historical initiative for a time.

The eighteenth century thus did not resolve the great antithesis which has
been the concern of history from the beginning and whose development constitutes
history, the antithesis of substance and subject, nature and mind, necessity
and freedom; but it set the two sides against each other, fully developed and
in all their sharpness, and thereby made it necessary to overcome the antithesis.
The consequence of this clear final evolution of the antithesis was general
revolution which spread over various nations and whose imminent completion will
at the same time resolve the antithesis of history up to the present. The Germans,
the nation of Christian spiritualism, experienced a philosophical revolution;
the French, the nation of classical materialism and hence of politics, had to
go through a political revolution; the English, a nation that is a mixture of
German and French elements, who therefore embody both sides of the antithesis
and are for that reason more universal than either of the two factors taken
separately, were for that reason drawn into a more universal, a social revolution.

* * *

The English nation is characterised by this unresolved contradiction and the
mingling of the sharpest contrasts. The English are the most religious nation
on earth and at the same time the most irreligious; they worry more about the
next world than any other nation, and at the same time they live as though this
world were all that mattered to them; their expectation of heaven does not hinder
them in the slightest from believing equally firmly in the hell of making
no money and in the everlasting inner restlessness of the English, which
is caught up in the sense of being unable to resolve the contradiction and which
drives them out of themselves and into activity. The sense of contradiction
is the source of energy, but merely external energy, and this sense of contradiction
was the source of colonisation, seafaring, industry and the immense practical
activity of the English in general. The inability to resolve the contradiction
runs like a thread through the whole of English philosophy and forces it into
empiricism and scepticism. Because Bacon could not resolve the contradiction
between idealism and realism with his intellect, the intellect as such had to
be incapable of solving it, idealism was simply discarded and empiricism regarded
as the only remedy. From the same source derives the critical analysis of cognition
and the whole psychological tendency within whose bounds English philosophy
has moved from the outset, and in the end, after many unsuccessful attempts
at resolving the contradiction, philosophy declares it to be insoluble and the
intellect to be inadequate, and seeks a way out either in religious faith or
in empiricism. Humean scepticism is still the form all irreligious philosophising
takes in England today. We cannot know, this viewpoint argues, whether a God
exists; if one exists, he is incapable of any communication with us, and we
have therefore so to arrange our practical affairs as if he did not exist. We
cannot know whether the mind is distinct from the body and immortal; we therefore
live as if this life were the only one we have and do not bother about things
that go beyond our understanding. In short, this scepticism is in practice exactly
the same as French materialism, but in metaphysical theory it never advances
beyond the inability of arriving at any definitive conclusion.

For Germany, the criticism of religion has been essentially completed,
and the criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism.

The profane existence of error is compromised as soon as its heavenlyoratio pro aris et focis [“speech for the altars and hearths”] has been refuted. Man,
who has found only the reflection of himself in the fantastic reality
of heaven, where he sought a superman, will no longer feel disposed to find
the mere appearance of himself, the non-man [Unmensch], where he seeks and must seek his true reality.

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion
does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem
of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself
again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man
is the world of man  state, society. This state and this society
produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because
they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world,
its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point
d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and
its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic
realization of the human essence since the human essence has not
acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly
the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression
of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the
sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul
of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people
is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up
their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition
that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in
embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that
man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so
that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism
of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality
like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that
he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory
Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth
has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate
task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement
in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement
has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of
Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and
the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.

* * *

German philosophy of right and state is the only German history
which is al pari[“on a level”] with the official
modern present. The German nation must therefore join this, its dream-history,
to its present conditions and subject to criticism not only these existing conditions,
but at the same time their abstract continuation. Its future cannot be limited
either to the immediate negation of its real conditions of state and right,
or to the immediate implementation of its ideal state and right conditions,
for it has the immediate negation of its real conditions in its ideal conditions,
and it has almost outlived the immediate implementation of its ideal
conditions in the contemplation of neighboring nations. Hence, it is with good
reason that the practical political part in Germany demands the negation
of philosophy.

It is wrong, not in its demand but in stopping at the demand, which it neither
seriously implements nor can implement. It believes that it implements that
negation by turning its back to philosophy and its head away from it and muttering
a few trite and angry phrases about it. Owing to the limitation of its outlook,
it does not include philosophy in the circle of German reality or it
even fancies it is beneath German practice and the theories that serve
it. You demand that real life embryos be made the starting-point, but you forget
that the real life embryo of the German nation has grown so far only inside
its cranium. In a word  You cannot abolish[aufheben]philosophy without making it a reality.

The same mistake, but with the factors reversed, was made by the theoretical
party originating from philosophy.

In the present struggle it saw only the critical struggle of philosophy
against the German world; it did not give a thought to the fact that philosophy
up to the present itself belongs to this world and is its completion, although
an ideal one. Critical towards its counterpart, it was uncritical towards itself
when, proceeding from the premises of philosophy, it either stopped at
the results given by philosophy or passed off demands and results from somewhere
else as immediate demands and results of philosophy – although these, provided
they are justified, can be obtained only by the negation of philosophy up
to the present, of philosophy as such. We reserve ourselves the right to
a more detailed description of this section: It thought it could make philosophy
a reality without abolishing[aufzuheben]it.

* * *

The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism of the weapon,
material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes
a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses. Theory is capable of
gripping the masses as soon as it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates
ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp the
root of the matter. But, for man, the root is man himself. The evident proof
of the radicalism of German theory, and hence of its practical energy, is that
is proceeds from a resolute positive abolition of religion. The criticism
of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest essence for man
– hence, with the categoric imperative to overthrow all relations in
which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence, relations which
cannot be better described than by the cry of a Frenchman when it was planned
to introduce a tax on dogs: Poor dogs! They want to treat you as human beings!

. . . I can only answer you: Your question is itself a product of abstraction.
Ask yourself how you arrived at that question. Ask yourself whether your question
is not posed from a standpoint to which I cannot reply, because it is wrongly
put. Ask yourself whether that progress as such exists for a reasonable mind.
When you ask about the creation of nature and man, you are abstracting, in so
doing, from man and nature. You postulate them as non-existent, and yet you
want me to prove them to you as existing. Now I say to you: Give up your abstraction
and you will also give up your question. Or if you want to hold on to your abstraction,
then be consistent, and if you think of man and nature as non-existent, then
think of yourself as non-existent, for you too are sure nature and man. Don't
think, don't ask me, for as soon as you think and ask, your abstraction from
the existence of nature and man has no meaning. Or are you such an egotist that
you conceive everything as nothing, and yet want yourself to exist?

The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is
not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove
the truth, ie the reality and power, the this-sidedness [Diesseitigkeit]
of his thinking, in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of
thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.

3

The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing,
and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed
upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator
must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to divide society into
two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing
of circumstances and of human activity or self-change [Selbstveränderung]
can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.

8

All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory
to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension
of this practice.

The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real
premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are
the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which
they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by
their activity. These premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way.

The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living
human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation
of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature. Of
course, we cannot here go either into the actual physical nature of man, or
into the natural conditions in which man finds himselfgeological, hydrographical,
climatic and so on. The writing of history must always set out from these natural
bases and their modification in the course of history through the action of
men.

Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything
else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals
as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is
conditioned by their physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence
men are indirectly producing their actual material life.

The way in which men produce their means of subsistence depends first of all
on the nature of the actual means of subsistence they find in existence and
have to reproduce. This mode of production must not be considered simply as
being the production of the physical existence of the individuals. Rather it
is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite form of expressing
their life, a definite mode of life on their part. As individuals express their
life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production,
both with what they produce and with how they produce. The nature of individuals
thus depends on the material conditions determining their production.

This production only makes its appearance with the increase of population.
In its turn this presupposes the intercourse [Verkehr] of individuals
with one another. The form of this intercourse is again determined by production.

The Sceptics reduced the theoretical relation of people to things to appearance,
and in practice they left everything as of old, being guided by this appearance
just as much as others are guided by actuality; they merely gave it another
name. Epicurus, on the other hand, was the true radical Enlightener of antiquity;
he openly attacked the ancient religion, and it was from him, too, that the
atheism of the Romans, insofar as it existed, was derived. For this reason,
too, Lucretius praised Epicurus as the hero who was the first to overthrow the
gods and trample religion underfoot; for this reason among all church fathers,
from Plutarch to Luther, Epicurus has always had the reputation of being the
atheist philosopher par excellence, and was called a swine; for which
reason, too, Clement of Alexandria says that when Paul takes up arms against
philosophy he has in mind Epicurean philosophy alone. (Stromatum, Book
I [chap. XI], p. 295, Cologne edition, 1688.) Hence we see how “cunning,
perfidious” and “clever” was the attitude of this open atheist
to the world in directly attacking its religion, while the Stoics adapted the
ancient religion in their own speculative fashion, and the Sceptics used their
concept of “appearance” as the excuse for being able to accompany
all their judgments with a reservatio mentalis.

"Before his time, [1735, John Wyatt] spinning machines, although very
imperfect ones, had already been used, and Italy was probably the country of
their first appearance. A critical history of technology would show how little
any of the inventions of the 18th century are the work of a single individual.
Hitherto there is no such book. Darwin has interested us in the history of Nature's
Technology, i.e., in the formation of the organs of plants and animals, which
organs serve as instruments of production for sustaining life. Does not the
history of the productive organs of man, of organs that are the material basis
of all social organisation, deserve equal attention? And would not such a history
be easier to compile, since, as Vico says, human history differs from natural
history in this, that we have made the former, but not the latter? Technology
discloses man's mode of dealing with Nature, the process of production by which
he sustains his life, and thereby also lays bare the mode of formation of his
social relations, and of the mental conceptions that flow from them. Every history
of religion, even, that fails to take account of this material basis, is uncritical.
It is, in reality, much easier to discover by analysis the earthly core of the
misty creations of religion, than, conversely, it is, to develop from the actual
relations of life the corresponding celestialised forms of those relations.
The latter method is the only materialistic, and therefore the only scientific
one. The weak points in the abstract materialism of natural science, a materialism
that excludes history and its process, are at once evident from the abstract
and ideological conceptions of its spokesmen, whenever they venture beyond the
bounds of their own speciality."

In addition, there is yet a set of different philosophers  those who
question the possibility of any cognition, or at least of an exhaustive cognition,
of the world. To them, among the more modern ones, belong Hume and Kant, and
they played a very important role in philosophical development. What is decisive
in the refutation of this view has already been said by Hegel, in so far as
this was possible from an idealist standpoint. The materialistic additions made
by Feuerbach are more ingenious than profound. The most telling refutation of
this as of all other philosophical crotchets is practice  namely, experiment
and industry. If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a
natural process by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions
and making it serve our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end
to the Kantian ungraspable thing-in-itself.

 Frederick Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German
Philosophy, chapter
2, Materialism, 1886.

Again, our agnostic admits that all our knowledge is based upon the information
imparted to us by our senses. But, he adds, how do we know that our senses give
us correct representations of the objects we perceive through them? And he proceeds
to inform us that, whenever we speak of objects, or their qualities, of which
he cannot know anything for certain, but merely the impressions which they have
produced on his senses. Now, this line of reasoning seems undoubtedly hard to
beat by mere argumentation. But before there was argumentation, there was action.
Im Anfang war die That. [from Goethe's Faust: "In the beginning
was the deed."] And human action had solved the difficulty long before
human ingenuity invented it. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. From
the moment we turn to our own use these objects, according to the qualities
we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise
of our sense-perception. If these perceptions have been wrong, then our estimate
of the use to which an object can be turned must also be wrong, and our attempt
must fail. But, if we succeed in accomplishing our aim, if we find that the
object does agree with our idea of it, and does answer the purpose we intended
it for, then that is proof positive that our perceptions of it and of its qualities,
so far, agree with reality outside ourselves. And, whenever we find ourselves
face-to-face with a failure, then we generally are not long in making out the
cause that made us fail; we find that the perception upon which we acted was
either incomplete and superficial, or combined with the results of other perceptions
in a way not warranted by them  what we call defective reasoning. So long
as we take care to train our senses properly, and to keep our action within
the limits prescribed by perceptions properly made and properly used, so long
as we shall find that the result of our action proves the conformity of our
perceptions with the objective nature of the things perceived. Not in one single
instance, so far, have we been led to the conclusion that our sense-perception,
scientifically controlled, induce in our minds ideas respecting the outer world
that are, by their very nature, at variance with reality, or that there is an
inherent incompatibility between the outer world and our sense-perceptions of
it.

But then come the Neo-Kantian agnostics and say: We may correctly perceive
the qualities of a thing, but we cannot by any sensible or mental process grasp
the thing-in-itself. This "thing-in-itself" is beyond our ken. To
this Hegel, long since, has replied: If you know all the qualities of a thing,
you know the thing itself; nothing remains but the fact that the said thing
exists without us; and, when your senses have taught you that fact, you have
grasped the last remnant of the thing-in-itself, Kant's celebrated unknowable
Ding an sich. To which it may be added that in Kant's time our knowledge
of natural objects was indeed so fragmentary that he might well suspect, behind
the little we knew about each of them, a mysterious "thing-in-itself".
But one after another these ungraspable things have been grasped, analyzed,
and, what is more, reproduced by the giant progress of science; and what we
can produce we certainly cannot consider as unknowable.